Hey, it’s John C. Houser again, posting for Dreamspinner Press. One morning in September of 2009, I woke from a unusual dream in which a young man told stories about himself. Somebody else was with him, but for no reason I could determine, his companion was silent. As he eventually explained, the speaker’s name was Jersey. His voice was so compelling I had to get out of bed and write down what I remembered of his stories. But I was particularly curious about Jersey’s silent companion. Why didn’t he speak? (I’m probably odd, but that kind of thing bothers me.) I began to invent explanations. Since many of Jersey’s stories were about his experiences in the Great War, I put Jersey and Frank into a flare-lit shell crater. I named Jersey’s companion Frank for the name’s very blandness, and because I knew nothing about him. Unfortunately, the best reason I could imagine for Frank’s silence in shell hole was that he was dead. That made for darker story than I wanted, so I moved the action to barn after the war. Gradually I accumulated detail. But always, the question that nagged was the reason for Frank’s silence. Eventually, I hit on the idea that he’d received a head injury in France during the Great War and lost his memory. Frank’s loss of memory, and his identity with it, proved key to the story. My books are on sale today at the Dreamspinner site: dreamspinnerpress/store/index.php?cPath=55_941 Check out my blog too: johnchouser/ I’ll end this post with an excerpt from the scene when Jersey meets Frank for the first time: *** The guy’s silence was disconcerting. “Yep, my name’s Jersey, like the cow. It’s a tradition in my family started by my great-grandfather who couldn’t get married until he had the money to buy a cow. The story goes he was so happy at achieving that goal—and getting himself a wife to boot—that he named my grandfather Jersey, when he arrived nine months later.” Frank’s expression did not change, nor did he respond. Jersey found himself talking again. “Actually, I made that story up. My real name is Gerald. Couldn’t never stand it. Everyone called me Jerry when I was growing up, but that didn’t sound so good after the war got going. So when our unit was moved to Camp Dix—New Jersey—for training, I started talking like one of the natives. Just as a joke, you know, because they sounded so queer to me. But the boys thought it was funny and started calling me Jersey.”
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 19:08:56 +0000
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